Dislocated | Poem

DISLOCATED

How might one explain to aliens from the PleiadesOr the future...or our own ancestors of Eire, UrIroguois or Africa, Japan or Tenochtitlan: Cotton is notLegally a food crop; therefore it may be sprayed withPoisons unfit for food crops although cottonseed oil is commonlyUsed in human food and cotton seed in feed for livestock raisedFor human food? Law does not describe reality...though itCould. Law does not describe reality because, like ritualOf a degenerate religion in which ritual order itself hasBecome more important than the messy reality the ritualSought to order...Of course, the poisons on the cotton mayNot be real either. I think of several members of myGrandparents' and great grandparents' generations, who lived the greaterPortion of lives into eighties and nineties in and about Newark,New Jersey right through its most noxious industrial period...Though socially it got harder up later. How does one, then,Explain a culture's contradictions poisons commonly ignored,That may or may not matter? Most people don't explain.Most go along doing what they find in front of themTo do, noting culture's contradictions, if at all, as stubbedToes, bumps and crashes and uncomfortable weather along the way.I can't do that. I can't not see. Craziness determines too much.Some would call what I do...or don't...crazy, but IDon't think so. Ineffectual all too often, sometimes paralyzed bySeeing no sane course. But...Most people by middle age know aLot about a little; a few lies, a few bits of ritual nonsense,Anyone can swallow: Only what the record certifies isAdmissible evidence; what happened is irrelevant. WhatYou are legally permitted to have, including your own body,Is determined by official documentation as ranked by whoever has meansTo command the most effective official document. Well, mostPeoples recognize Right of Conquest as real whether they like itOr not. But when the emperor or the law conquers whatHe, she or it has no competence to administer, there areNot just feeling problems, but reality problems as well. It isNot that my society is not nice...or even that it is notNicer to me...that paralyses me. For that matter,The society I live in is sometimes quite nice to me andCertainly many people I know are. But too often, those in positionsOf power make claims that are not true, make demandsThat are not possible. Then I do not know what to do....I cannot help but to think of the tale of Exodus.Pharaoh commanded his Israelite slaves to make bricks without straw.God liberated the slaves. It was not hard labor norWorse living conditions Pharaoh.